Boulder City Councilwoman Lisa Morzel was on a Texas mountaintop Friday when she learned federal authorities won't conduct a controlled 701-acre burn this spring at the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, where nuclear weapons parts were manufactured through the Cold War era.

And when Morzel got the news, her spirits — like those of the many who had opposed the potential burn — soared sky-high.

"I am so happy. I am very happy," Morzel said. "I'm sitting on top of a peak here in Big Bend, and the news couldn't have come at a better time."

Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish, a Superior mother of three who founded the activist group Candelas Glows — named for an Arvada subdivision built just south of the proposed burn area — was similarly elated.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service eight-state Region 6 office in Lakewood announced Friday it will not go ahead with a burn that was considered for this spring as a way to reduce its accumulating fuel load and invasive species on the sprawling grasslands immediately south of Boulder County.

The 701-acre burn was to have taken place in late March or April, and had been opposed by many. The Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, whose membership includes 10 local governments — the cities of Boulder, Broomfield and Boulder County among them — took a stance against the burn.

In doing so, the stewardship group made clear it was responding to public concerns "that will not be sufficiently alleviated through any public education process," rather than to data relating to the possible dangers of exposure to plutonium or other contaminants that some fear could be released into the air by a burn.

The Fish & Wildlife Service has not, however, ruled out a controlled blaze further down the road.

"Although the controlled burn is a management tool that we will consider in the future, we have heard concerns from the public and we want to take time to engage in further dialogue on these issues," Noreen Walsh, regional director for the service's mountain-prairie region, said in a prepared statement.

"The State of Colorado, the U.S. Department of Energy and others have all approved our proposed burn plan, but as good neighbors, we want to assure the public that safety is our absolute priority."

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Jan. 20 had issued a permit allowing for the burn.

A refuge where public is not now welcome

Walsh was unavailable for further comment Friday. But Deputy Regional Director Matt Hogan elaborated on the agency's stance.

"We like to be good neighbors, and we like to listen to the public we serve," Hogan said. "It became obvious to us as we were continuing to have the dialogue, and as the date for a 'go or no-go' was approaching, we realized we needed to have more conversation and more dialogue with our neighbors and our partners before we were ready to move on something like that."

Hogan emphasized that the agency still believes a burn would have been safe.

"We would never do anything unless we were 110 percent convinced it was safe, both for our neighbors and our own employees," Hogan said. "They were going to be out there dealing with the fire.

"We did our due diligence, we talked to all the experts and we probably oversampled, to make sure we were confident that no matter what happened, there was no chance this burn was going to put anything into the atmosphere that would be unsafe, whether for our neighbors or for our own people."

The proposal, known as the South Woman Creek burn in official documentation, was to have targeted land at the southwest corner of the nearly 5,000-acre Rocky Flats property. Now, the Fish & Wildlife Service will decide on an alternate plan.

Other remaining options include mowing, herbicides or grazing. A self-described "gypsy goat-herder" is on record saying she could bring as many as 2,000 goats to the job, at no peril to the animals.

Friday's announcement does not necessarily mean, however, that it's time for the goats.

"Historically, we have used grazing across the entire refuge system when we think it's the appropriate tool," Hogan said. "In terms of whether it's goats or cattle or some mix (that might be used) there, I'm probably not the right guy to talk to."

A $7 billion cleanup was completed in 2005 at Rocky Flats, where fission cores, called triggers, were manufactured from 1952 through 1989, first under the control of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, then the Department of Energy.

It was reborn in 2006 as a wildlife refuge under management of the Fish & Wildlife Service, although it's a refuge closed to the public, with no immediate plans to open it. A 1,038-acre core area at the property has been retained by the DOE.

According to the Fish & Wildlife Service website for the refuge, it is still closed "due to a lack of appropriations for refuge management operations." It's considered a critical habitat for the federally threatened Preble's meadow jumping mouse and hosts hundreds of acres of rare xeric tallgrass prairie. Significant populations of mule deer and elk also thrive there.

'It's amazing they listened to the community'

Gabrieloff-Parish had not been optimistic about the direction the Fish & Wildlife Service decision might be headed. She was among those who came away from a Jan. 26 meeting of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council — at which refuge project leader David Lucas made a presentation — believing that grazing was not being considered as an option.

"Even if they were going to not do a burn, I thought it would take longer" to reach that decision, Gabrieloff-Parish said. "At the stewardship council, it sounded like, 'We don't care very much about your opinions; this is what we're doing.' It's amazing they listened to the community and all the people who have been opposing it."

Morzel is Boulder's representative to the stewardship council and was present at the same meeting. She had a conversation with Lucas in its wake.

"I said, 'Dave, we have to work together for the next decades to come, and this is just one of many issues that we're going to have to address,'" Morzel said.

"The burn is one, but we're going to be looking at opening the refuge, we'll be looking at the refuge-to-refuge bike system that's coming in," referring to a potential metro bike loop that could connect the wildlife refuge with the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

Summarizing her comments made to Lucas that day, Morzel said she told him, "These are all big management things, and you can either fight us or work with us. Right now, you have 14 people (out of 14) on this stewardship council that are unanimously opposed" to a burn.

On Wednesday, Superior Mayor Clint Folsom had made a presentation to the Metro Mayors Caucus on the potential burn and said that group would be following through with a letter of opposition on behalf of area mayors, once it was approved by the group's 41 mayor-members.

"We're in fairly close proximity to Rocky Flats, and because of our close proximity, we have concerns about what happens there, and we're concerned from potential environmental factors and just the possibility that controlled burns can get out of control sometimes," Folsom said.

Hogan said no fire this spring does not mean there will never be a controlled burn at Rocky Flats.

"We don't want to take it off the table," he said. "We think it's safe. We also think it's the right tool for the job, so we are going to have it as an option. But we won't move forward with it without further dialogue. It's off the table for the foreseeable future -— and by that, I mean this spring. But it is not off the table for perpetuity."

LeRoy Moore, of Boulder's Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, had helped lead the opposition to a burn.

"A burn now or later would almost certainly release ... plutonium in smoke plumes," he wrote in an email. "It would be carried by wind who knows where, then inhaled by unsuspecting people. Particles would lodge in the body and continually irradiate surrounding cells, typically for the rest of one's life.

"The result could be cancer, a compromised immune system, or genetic harm to offspring. This danger remains at Rocky Flats."

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